


a bitter release

by unraelated



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, M/M, Masturbation, Mental Health Issues, Original Male Character - Freeform, Self Loathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:54:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25777729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unraelated/pseuds/unraelated
Summary: Dimitri has not touched himself in years.For Wank Week 2020
Comments: 20
Kudos: 114





	a bitter release

**Author's Note:**

> Heya! This is a fic set during the timeskip, when Dimitri was on the run and pretty mentally unwell. It's fairly dark and full of a lot of canon-typical self loathing issues, just as a forewarning!

The troops were gone.

It wasn't a large battalion by any means. The village was anemic, with one main road, half a dozen families, and a shared well. Edelgard's generals must not have seen fit to dispatch any sizable army to ensure that the village was safely under their control and Dimitri was grateful for it.

Well. As grateful as he could have been for anything. 

He had intervened of course, killed a small handful of them and watched as the rest fled on their horses, too fast to even dream of capturing and finishing the job.

Then, stinking of blood and grime, he turned, his one good eye snapping to the only person who hadn't run from the sight of the troops: a farmhand, maybe a year younger than himself, holding a rusted sword with the wrong stance and looking all for the world that he may very well pass out from fear on the spot.

He had come out to help, Dimitri remembered, when the battalion began laying waste to the village, when Dimitri cut in. He'd brought some hideous blade which must have been lying in some attic somewhere for the last hundred years, and tried to fight. His inexperience made him an imposition. He was another casualty waiting to happen.

He was brave and soft, muscled enough from farm work that he could at least parry a single blow before Dimitri had intervened, slaughtering the soldier approaching him and turning away to deal with the rest of them without a second thought.

And now they were alone.

"Y-you're," the farmhand stammered, the tip of his blade betraying the tremble in his hand, "you're-" 

"Not anymore," Dimitri snarled, cutting him off.

The soldiers knew he was here. The survivors would tell their captain, they would dispatch more troops to this area to find him. Dimitri's head was worth more than a tiny farmstead, he knew. In saving this village, he had doomed them.

Frustration and rage bubbled deep in his throat, the voices of the damned cursed him for intervening at all, but - but.

"Slaughter two pigs," he finally said, his eye narrowed into a glare, "do it brutally. With weapons. Tell them I did it. Tell them I held you hostage, forced you to accommodate me. Tell them I went for the mountains after I had my fill."

"You? But you…"

Dimitri took a calculated step closer, then two. When the man was staring at him like this, all wonder and deep blue eyes, he could almost see another young man in his stead. The farmhand was tanned, his skin chapped from the late summer sun. There was a small scar on his chin, faded to the point of charm. His hair was a dusty blond, cropped close to his head.

Dimitri slammed the back of his hand into the young man's face, the blow taking him off guard and sending him reeling, stumbling, falling to the ground and sputtering in pain and shock. 

It was a good hit. Dimitri hadn't held back. The boy was bleeding from his lip, the skin of his angular jaw and cheek reddened and angry where surely a multicolored bruise would form and take up damn near half of his sweet and innocent face.

"Tell them I did that when you tried to refuse me."

He turned then and left, gone before the man could even have the chance to get up.

-

He went into the mountains. Where else would he go? He had time, a few days before the soldiers would return to the village and follow his trail. Dimitri made sure to leave markings of his presence: a fire, a hastily constructed shelter, bones of animals he'd shot down. He made himself trackable, made the story from the village accurate.

He still stank of blood. It was dried now, congealed on his armor, clumping in his hair. He needed to wash, at least enough to where he wouldn't be a target for any opportunistic predators.

He found a river to make his camp at. A small mountain stream descended from the snowy ice caps, which trailed all the way down to this patch of even ground. Dimitri surveyed the area around him with a flat stare, keeping himself still as he listened to the sounds of… nothing. The forest around him was silent as the grave, with not even a bird to sing away the evening. He must have scared them all away.

Slowly, methodically, Dimitri peeled himself out of his armor, taking a cloth and wiping each piece clean as he removed it and set it aside. Without the proper oils it was difficult to maintain his equipment, but he did what he could with the cold water he had on hand. 

He kept his weapon close, a staple of his paranoia. He was prepared to fight in any scenario - naked, if he had to, if he was ambushed while bathing.

But nothing happened. Nothing came. Eventually, his armor lay out in pieces, shining with polished care and he stripped out of his grimy padded shirt, regarding it with disgust for a moment before submerging it in the water, working it with his hands until the water ran clean again. He took it out and hung it up on a nearby branch and then, reluctantly, did the same with his pants.

It felt strange. His armor, his clothing, had become a second skin to him, pushed aside in pieces only when he needed to tend to an injury or relieve himself. He hadn't stripped fully out of it in… he didn't remember how long. His skin felt like an exposed organ, and the air's chill on it shivered through him, made him feel vulnerable, unprotected.

Uncomfortable.

His skin was streaked with dirt, sweat which had gathered dust as it slipped across his skin and then dried against it, blood which trickled underneath his armor, dirt from where he slept. Disgusting. Unclean.

"My only son, a filth-covered wretch."

Dimitri breathed out through his nose at the voice which echoed through the silence of the trees. He didn't bother to look for the source. He simply said:

"Yes."

"You're a shameful, loathsome creature," it continued.

Dimitri moved to hang up his pants to dry.

"Yes."

"You're beyond saving," it whispered, curling fingers around his throat. 

There was a pause and Dimitri frowned, turning back toward the river and moving to sit next to the water, where he divested himself of his underclothes and washed those too.

This one broke his heart, but he knew it was true. He was too tired to rise into a rage this time, and besides - there was no one to beat himself against.

"Yes."

That seemed to pacify the owner of the voice, for he did not continue. Dimitri instead took his cloth - the same one he had used to clean his armor, now stained with blood and grime - and dipped it into the water, rinsing it quickly before bringing it to his leg and beginning to wipe himself down.

When the first leg was somewhat cleaner, he moved to the other, and then wiped down his arms, and then his chest. The water was cold, but it did not bother him - he wanted to dress again as quickly as possible, to be rid of the sensitivity that came from his bare skin, exposed to the open air.

His chest and throat were clean and Dimitri briefly dipped his head into the water to wet his hair, watching as the red stained water slowly dissipated into the rest of the stream. The chill was bracing, and when he jerked his head back to flip his wet hair away from his face, droplets of water ran down his back, raising dapples of goosebumps across his skin.

Then, all that was left was…

Dimitri rinsed the cloth again and tentatively took his flaccid cock in hand, gently nudging it out of the way while he cleaned between his thighs, into the areas of him that had gone untouched for longer than he cared to remember.

It was nothing. It felt like nothing. He rinsed the cloth again before wetting his hip, his abdomen and then, eventually, his cock.

"Shameful," someone else said, whispered over his shoulder, "don't look at it."

He obeyed, keeping his eyes on the water like a good soldier while he cleaned his more intimate areas. He thought about the fight. He thought about how he would fool the soldiers on his tail, how he would bring them in and kill them, he thought about his next move, deeper into the heart of Faerghus, he - 

\- he thought about the bright blue eyes of that farmhand, staring up at him in wonder and awe. He thought about the easy, corded strength of his shoulders, his naive ineptitude, his bravery.

He thought about the deeply, horribly satisfying way he'd hit him.

His cock gave a traitorous twitch.

Dimitri froze in his movements, his eye going wide, and there was silence. There were no voices to guide him here, just the strange thrum of tingling sensitivity, pooling low in his gut.

He dared not touch himself any further. He dared not move his hand from where he'd been cleaning. He felt frozen as a rabbit at the sudden and wholly unfamiliar sensation of pleasure that sparked somewhere deep in his brain, behind the steel walls of necessity, combat, and self loathing. He didn't know what to do with it. His animal brain could not yet process the act, the self-serving indulgence which achieved nothing, which revealed him further for the filth that he was.

There was a time, once, long ago - so long ago it felt like a dream - where a stupid, naive boy who looked like him laid in a soft bed, slipped his fingers underneath the waistband of his pants, and found a pleasure there. It had only happened a small handful of times, his mind was preoccupied enough elsewhere, but… it was enough to give him the knowledge of what his wretched body was doing to him now.

A hundred soldiers dead at his hands could not make him tremble, but this, on his knees in the middle of the forest with his hand frozen around his hardening shaft - this rocked him.

What could he do?

_What would the farmboy do?_

Could he pretend he was him, even for a moment? They had the same shade of hair, a similar build. Could he - would the other man allow himself this pleasure? Would he take it at night, stealing it like some sort of thief? Would he do like Dimitri himself once did, biting at his palm as he stroked himself to completion? 

His fingers, unbidden, twitched around his firming cock. It wasn't enough to draw pleasure from himself, but it reminded him of the precarious position he found himself in. It would be easy, so easy, to circle his fingers around himself and continue. It would be easy to pretend he was someone else, the farmer or even the boy he used to be. It would be easy, but - 

_Oh_ , but he was a filthy, disgusting animal. He didn't deserve that dying spark of pleasure, nor did he deserve the satisfaction that always came with the end of it. He was a beast, meant to fight and rend and rip apart everything he touched.

And still, it gnawed at him, the increasing desire to continue, to see it through. It rose, sharper and sharper in the back of his mind until it felt like more of a primal need than his next meal, than a dry place to sleep. He wanted it. He wanted to see it through.

He wanted just a glimmer, just the faintest ray of something nice in his miserable life.

His hand closed tighter, and he closed his eye with it. Dimitri almost expected to hear something, from Glenn or Dedue, or Goddess forbid, his father, but there was silence. The spirits, it seemed, would grant him this smallest of reprieves, and for that he was grateful. 

Except… he didn't quite know what to - what would - how to work it. It had been so long with so little thought to his own body, that the concept of squeezing pleasure out through this act was… Dimitri could not remember what he liked, what was good, or even how to do it.

He felt inept, foolish as he slowly wrapped his fingers more firmly on the shaft and began to stroke himself with all the tentative uncertainty of petting a particularly skittish animal. He was apprehensive, on edge, _waiting_ to feel a rush of something pleasurable, something which barely trickled in, as opposed to the tidal wave he'd been expecting.

Dimitri swallowed hard and shifted to sit instead, the ground cold under his naked rear. He leaned back and tried again, firmer this time - it was part of his body and it needed to obey him, like the rest of his body did during battle. He touched it, it gave him what he wanted: that was the expectation.

The reality of it was more that it felt almost as deadened as his sense of taste, and as Dimitri felt a building sense of disappointment, he also felt… challenged.

He had initially sparked in interest when he thought of the man he'd exchanged words with. Dimitri took a deep breath and, in stuttered waves, tried to think of him again. What he might feel like, with his hands on himself. What he might do, if he was with someone else…

There were a few fleeting moments Dimitri let his thoughts wander, from the farmhand to the men from his naive boyhood days at Garreg Mach, to his friends, to the people he looked at and used to think about - but that was too painful, that shot a bolt of rage through his heart and threatened to end the whole thing.

No, the nameless farmboy was safer to think about, safer to use as an example. In Dimitri's mind, he took it slow, used his fingers to stroke under his cockhead, rubbed his palm along the sensitive underside… and so he did that too. He worked at it slowly, exploring himself through the lens of the man he had met as if his body was uncharted territory that he had never touched before.

In a way, it was. This version of himself was different from the boy he had been, different in enough ways that he no longer considered them to be one and the same. The new Dimitri - _this_ Dimitri - had never been touched.

And so, he did it now. Slowly, he worked himself to full hardness and felt the gentle pleasure of it trickle back up his spine. It felt like the melting of a candle: the first few drops of wax came slowly, but soon enough, it would spill out and overflow. He could feel it now, the wholly alien sensation of it beginning to take shape in his mind. He categorized it, learned it, and with great difficulty, accepted it.

He learned what he liked. He needed a grip that was firm, needed a stroke that was rigid, but he liked… he liked it when his touch was soft too. He liked gently playing with the glans, stroking his fingertips along the areas that he learned were sensitive. He liked touching his inner thighs, and felt suddenly as if his body was a whirlwind of sensation.

In some corner of his mind, Dimitri knew that this would end soon. He knew how this sort of thing usually ended, but he thought, maybe if he could stretch it out, maybe it didn't have to end so quickly. Maybe he could just give himself this, maybe he could have it for just a moment longer, because he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would not let himself have it again. 

He didn't imagine anyone else touching him. He didn't put himself in his fantasies at all - his presence would ruin them. Instead, he thought about how it might feel if he were someone else, anyone but this hollowed-out animal, someone who could touch themselves and feel… feel something _this_ nice.

Because it was nice. Dimitri gave himself over to it, his hand picking up speed as he stroked himself. His other hand lifted, reaching down to join in, to trace his fingertips along the sensitive edge and shift down lower, lower until he got his hand cupped around his balls.

Sensitive - goddess, it was _sensitive_ , and Dimitri couldn't hold back a whimper, the softest, littlest sound that burst through his lips at the feeling of it. He kneaded at them, shifting his hips and spreading his legs in a way that made it easier to touch, to reach down and explore all the delightful little crevices along his body. 

His stroking grew more insistent as it built up like water in a dam and Dimitri shuddered, his hips twitching. The friction grew too warm and he reached up to lick his tongue along the flat of his palm and then pushed his hand back down to touch again, his saliva easing the way.

A tug, a touch, a squeeze - and he gasped as he finally felt it, ripping through his body in a crashing wave that he had never quite experienced before. His eye flew open at the sensation as he groaned, pitching forward as he came on sharp, pleasurable bursts. It blanked out everything in his mind, filled him with a hazy sensation of comfort and dulled edges, and it was just - _good._ His body surged uncontrollably as he let out another spurt, and another, before it was over and he was done.

Dimitri exhaled shakily, blearily looking at the ground beneath him to see the pearlescent liquid of his seed dotting at the dirt. His throat felt full; he swallowed but the fullness did not go away. 

How nice, to learn himself. How lovely, to feel this way. Dimitri took a deep breath and then another, and then - 

"Clean this up, you monster."

His shoulders stiffened and he nodded, slowly moving to rinse his hands in the cold stream, running water along his fingers and reaching for the cloth again.

"Did you think you deserved that? Do you think you deserve anything?"

Dimitri perfunctorily wiped himself clean and then, as an afterthought, splashed water onto the dirt where he'd spilled out, to wash the evidence away.

He rose as the thoughts continued, whirling in his mind, mixing with the voices in the air until he could no longer tell which he was hearing and which he was thinking. Dimitri blinked it away and reached for his clothing, which was nowhere near dry, but would dry more quickly next to a fire than here.

He took them back to his makeshift camp, nude but no longer thinking about the sensitivity of his skin, or the wind, or anything else. He slipped back into his damp underclothes and stoked the fire, his jaw set tight.

“You monster,” they told him. “You animal.”

Dimitri made no visible indication that he’d heard them at first. Then, after stoking the fire a bit more and reaching for his armor, he nodded.

“Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you'd like to check me out, my handle is [@unraelated](https://twitter.com/unraelated). Thank you!


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